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Health Promotion International Advance Access published online on February 28, 2009
Health Promotion International, doi:10.1093/heapro/dap005
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Perspective

Escaping from the Phantom Zone: social determinants of health, public health units and public policy in Canada

Dennis Raphael*

School of Health Policy and Management, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON, Canada M3J 1P3

* E-mail: draphael{at}yorku.ca


  Abstract

Despite the Canadian record of concern with the social determinants of health (SDOH), actual public health activities consistent with such an approach are sporadic at best. Canadian research and advocacy activities in the service of strengthening the SDOH are so divorced from everyday public policy activity, media discourse and public awareness as to metaphorically suggest that SDOH researchers and advocates exist in a Phantom Zone of irrelevance. Why this might be the case and means of escaping from such irrelevance are presented. Implications for jurisdictions where the situation appears to be even worse—such as the USA—and for those where the situation may be somewhat better are also presented.

Jor-El's discovery of the Phantom Zone, and his invention of the Phantom Zone Projector (a device which allows individuals to be cast into the Zone), ended the debate on what to do with Kryptonian society's worst offenders. Inside the Phantom Zone, individuals became disembodied spirits, able to communicate with one another telepathically and to observe the real events as unseen voyeurs - but they were incapable of doing harm. No one in the Phantom Zone aged, and no one could die there. It seemed the perfect humanitarian prison. In actuality, it was a living Hell (World of Superman, 2008).

Key words: social determinants; health promotion; public policy


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Health Promot. Int., September 1, 2009; 24(3): 199 - 202.
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